Oman fiscal surplus widens to $1.4bn

Muscat, December 5, 2013

Oman's government budget surplus widened to 543.9 million rials ($1.4 billion) at the end of October from 339.9 million rials seen in the first nine months of 2013, data showed on Thursday.

However, the January-October outcome is sharply down from a surplus of 2.8 billion rials in the same period of 2012, data from the National Center for Statistics and Information show.

Analysts polled by Reuters in September forecast the non-Opec oil exporter to post a fiscal surplus of 4.9 per cent of GDP in 2013 and 3 per cent in 2014. Overall in 2012 the country had a small deficit of 81 million rials or 0.3 per cent of GDP.

Oman, which based its 2013 budget on a projected oil price of $85 per barrel, expected expenditure of 12.9 billion rials and a deficit of 1.7 billion rials.-Reuters